Silver How, Grasmere, The Lake District, Feb 2016

Today is my lovely friend Liz's birthday, so I thought I'd create a post about something memorable that we did together. Last year at this time we were on holiday in Grasmere, the Lake District. One day we left our men behind for a change and went for a rather challenging walk up Silver How mountain. Well, to be truthful, the walk is rated as easy-to-moderate on the map, but for us, inexperienced fell walkers, it was far from being easy.


We left the village of Grasmere by the road that leads to the lake. I am always fascinated by the many white washed houses in the Lakes strewn all over the landscape and making it look like scenes from story books.


I don't think I could have got a better foreground to a rural lakeland scene than sheep at their feeders.


We soon turned onto a rocky path and continued along a steep climb. I made sure to often turn back to admire the views.


Another scene with white washed houses caught my eye. Just couldn't resist their charming starkness.


Dry stone walls are another favourite of mine in any English countryside. There was a cairn near this one, a stone stack built by walkers, which is a regular sight in the Lake District. Cairns usually stand as landmarks, and come in all sorts of sizes and shapes.


We passed through many wooden gates like the one in the bottom right corner. At this stage the views were getting more and more spectacular. Love the curve of the dry stone wall framing the distant mountain.


The winter sun was trying to break through the clouds. I had to act quick to catch it shining on this beautiful tree and its surroundings, leaving behind the snow covered peaks in the distance.


A lot of the time the lighting was very contrasty for panoramic photography, and the exposure quite tricky as shown by the hazy and rather overexposed detail in the background of this image. But I must say I am not overly fussed with technicalities of photography, conveying the mood of the moment being my main interest.


Our path was getting steeper and steeper, but we were enjoying the ascent.


Another look back....so much to marvel at in the wonderful world of nature!


  I love the mixture of beauty and drama in the lakeland landscape.


Liz, my beautiful friend, with her cheeks rosy from the cold air and energetic climb up the mountain.


The view to our left over Grasmere lake. It was taken from approximately the highest point we went to, about half way through the circular walk. From here onwards the path became less than a foot wide, completely exposed with sheer drop to the left, and boggy as well, as we approached a stream. The stream was only narrow but beyond it the path seemed unclear, sharply bending to the right, you could not see where. We decided going any further would be going out of our comfort zone; we didn't want any sort of stress to possibly spoil our hike, so we started retracing our steps to go back down the way came.


A view of Grasmere lake somewhere on our descent.......


......and another one as we were nearing the road.

It would have been nice to have completed the circular walk, but we were content with what we did, and just happy we'd got to do this together. Getting high up on a Lake District mountain to enjoy magnificent nature sights is all we wanted.
Back in the village it was time for a nice warming bowl of home made soup.
I couldn't think of a better way to spend time with a good friend and can't wait for us to do it again.
This is how we spent Liz's birthday in the Lakes last year; and this the day after








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